A Short Note on Short Pants

Abstract

AbstractIt is a theorem of Bers that any closed hyperbolic surface admits a pants decomposition consisting of curves of bounded length where the bound only depends on the topology of the surface. The question of the quantification of the optimal constants has been well studied, and the best upper bounds to date are linear in genus, due to a theorem of Buser and Seppälä. The goal of this note is to give a short proof of a linear upper bound that slightly improves the best known bound.